Immigration Judges Push for Union as Trump Prepares Mass Deportations

With the incoming president promising to ramp up deportations, the nation's 734 immigration judges are seeking to reinstate their union rights to address growing concerns over an anticipated surge in cases.

The judges' appeal, scheduled for a hearing before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) on Tuesday, aims to restore the union representation they lost in 2020. Under Trump's first term, the FLRA reclassified judges as "managers," stripping them of their bargaining rights. A federal court later ruled that immigration judges are entitled to union representation, prompting the current push.

Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents 90,000 workers across various sectors in the U.S. and Canada, said the judges want a voice in their workplace and fear being overwhelmed by the expected flood of cases. "They need a voice as workers, as immigration judges," Biggs told Axios.

The immigration system is already grappling with a historic backlog of 3.7 million cases, including 1.6 million involving asylum seekers. At the current pace, resolving the backlog could take four years — a timeline that could stretch to 16 years under Trump's deportation plan, according to an analysis by Axios.

The potential mass deportations, which immigration experts estimate could cost between $150 billion and $350 billion, are central to Trump's immigration platform. Trump hinted at declaring a national emergency and potentially using local law enforcement, the military, and federal agencies to carry out deportation efforts.

He has also pledged to remove all undocumented immigrants, focus on those who have committed crimes, and end birthright citizenship. In a recent interview, he suggested his solution to avoid separating families with undocumented parents is deporting them all together. "I don't want to be break up families, so the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back."

Despite these plans, immigration courts made significant progress in the past fiscal year, closing 900,000 cases — the highest ever recorded, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). However, judges remain under pressure, often spending only 30 minutes per case to address the backlog. The FLRA is expected to issue a decision on the union appeal within six weeks.

In addition to judges, other groups are concerned about the potential consequences of Trump's plans. Last month, over 190 migrant advocacy groups sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, urging them to reduce the number of immigration detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before Trump assumes office. The groups called on Biden to grant humanitarian parole to detained migrants from "particularly vulnerable populations," such as those with physical or mental health conditions, who have been held while awaiting their immigration court hearings.

An estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, working in industries such as agriculture, construction, health care, and services. Trump's mass deportation plan could slash U.S. GDP by up to 6.8%, the American Immigration Council estimates. Deportations could result in a GDP loss ranging from $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion, an amount comparable to the economic downturn during the Great Recession.